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Thomas Schwedersky |
| Thomas
supports people by facilitating organisational change and building
capacities for creative learning. He works with a broad range of
organisations in the field of rural development: Government agencies
and service providers, development organisations from the NGO community
and local organisations. He specially likes to work at the interface of
development projects and local organisations but he also has a broad
range of working experiences on the policy level. He has lived in
Africa for more than eight years, discovering the differences between
Burkina Faso as a Sahelian and Zimbabwe as a Southern African country.
Thomas also has extensive working experiences in a number of South and
South East Asian countries (Sri Lanka, Cambodia). Thomas’ specialisation is on natural resource management and organisational development. He is familiar with collaborative management approaches and practices and how they need to go together with organisational change and institutional learning. In the nineties Thomas worked as a project manager for an institutional learning project within GTZ (German Development Cooperation) focusing on participatory natural resource management. This gave him a wealth of experiences on how learning and change processes in the field of integrated natural resource management can be initiated and enhanced. He has joined PICOTEAM in 2007 after working extensively as an independent consultant for a broad range of clients from the development community. Assignments included a facilitated self-evaluation which Thomas conducted - on behalf of MISEREOR, the leading catholic development organisation in Germany – within INADES formation, an ivory coast based African international NGO, working on strengthening farmer organisations in 8 Francophone and 2 Anglophone countries. Another assignment made him working as member of the change management team in the “Rehabilitation and Modernisation of TVET (Technical and Vocational Education Training) Institutions” project as part of Sri Lankan – German Development Cooperation. As part of PICOTEAM he is currently involved in the implementation of the SCARDA (Strengthening Capacity in Agricultural Research in Africa) - programme in cooperation with Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the Association for Strengthening Capacity in Agricultural Research in Africa (ASARECA). PICOTEAM’s contribution focuses on developing and strengthening management and leadership capacities within selected national agricultural research institutions. Thomas was originally trained as a social and educational scientist before joining the agricultural faculty of the University of Goettingen, Germany where he received his PhD with a thesis on participation in local self help organisations based on his working experiences in Burkina Faso. While living in Zimbabwe he received training from Louw DuToit international management consultants in South Africa as a change management professional. A native of Germany, Thomas lives near Bonn, the former capital of Germany, with his wife, Karola, and the 2 daughters, Amelia and Vivianne. He enjoys listening to classical music, playing piano and spending time with his family and with friends. | |
